Fanny had pictured this meeting with Eliza again and again during the month she had been away, and she had thought it would be part of the day's pleasure and triumph to show her sister the grand watch she had bought. But now—well, how could she?
"Did you tell your teacher?" asked Mrs. Brown. The younger girl looked up quickly, for she noticed the change in her mother's tone.
"What is it? What is the matter, mother? Have they been to say that the Nurse thinks I am too little to look after the children?" she asked, with changing colour.
Her mother shook her head, and the tears filled her eyes, as she said—
"No, no, dear; it isn't that. But I don't know how to get you the tidy things the Vicar said you would want."
Eliza turned and looked at her sister. "Haven't you got your wages?" she whispered, for her mother had told her there would be no difficulty about the new cotton frocks she would have to buy for her, because Fanny would be able to let her have the money, and they could repay her later. But now, as she looked at her sister's angry, downcast face, she did not know what to think. "The lady didn't pay you, did she, Fan?" she said, with a tremor in her voice, fixing her eyes on her sister's face as she spoke.
"Don't look at me like that! I can't help it! I'm sorry. But I haven't got any money to buy you new frocks, and I don't see—"
She could not say any more, for she heard her father coming in at that moment, and she dashed out of the back door and went through a gap in the hedge, and walked to some fields close by, where she sat down and cried to herself for several minutes. She managed to persuade herself that her mother was very unkind and unreasonable to think she could have all her money to spend upon Eliza, and that she had no right to say what she did about the watch. "I wonder what she would think if she knew I had to pay two pounds for it. She thinks ten shillings a lot of money, and so I shall keep it to myself that I have to pay any more." And Fanny thought she had better go home again and make the best she could of things, or some of the children would be sent to look for her.
Just after she had started to run back, she heard her name called by a familiar voice, and the next minute she was joined by a girl about her own age, but dressed in a dirty-fine frock, and looking altogether so slatternly and untidy that even Fanny was struck with the contrast in their appearance.
"Are you out for your holiday, Fan?" she said, as she slipped her arm in Fanny's.